David Hugo was the second sculptor in residence at the University of Warwick in 1988. The residency culminated in the exhibition 'Between Scylla and Charybdis' at the Mead Gallery, which included this sculpture. In this work Hugo combines a variety of contrasting materials, to portray his ideas on calculating the amount of time. The red and white striped rods indicate apparatus for measuring and the globes are a sign of measurement, a visual image of the world.

David Hugo wrote about Sensedatum: Hour Glass II : " It was about death, death of a relationship. The vertical plane representing the being laid to rest, the floating world being the elevated spirit, and the hanging one the spirit yielding to gravity. This all taking place in the confines of the cage-skull that forms the piece Hour Glass, as in time having run its course. Hour Glass might also be the glass in which one reflects a past sharing, and its death."